As you haven’t met for such a long time I thought it might be a good idea if you and I had a preliminary talk about it first, so that I can sort of put you in the picture. I very much hope that you will agree to this. I will, if I may, telephone you at the office tomorrow morning and find out what time would be convenient for me to visit you. I very much hope that all this can be arranged amicably. Your father is an old man and very far from well.
Yours sincerely,
Danby Odell
”Oh God,” said Miles.
”What is it?”
”A letter from Danby.”
”Danby? Oh, Danby Odell. What does he want?”
”He wants me to go and see my father.”
”Isn’t it odd,” said Diana, pushing her hair back behind her ears, “that in all these years I’ve never met either your father or Danby Odell. Is it urgent, I mean is the old man on the point of death?”
”Apparently not.”
”You’ll go of course? I’ve been feeling for some time that you ought to do something about it.”
Miles threw the letter down on the table. He felt exasperation and an uneasy feeling rather like fear. “Well, hell, I’ve been writing polite letters to the old bastard all these years and he’s never replied. And now that fool Danby writes as if it was somehow all my fault.”
Diana had picked up the letter. “I think it’s quite a nice let ter. He doesn’t imply it’s your fault.”
”Yes he does. Oh Christ.” Miles did not want this now. He did not want emotions and memories and scenes and unmanageable unforeseeable situations. He did not want to go through the rigmarole of forgiving and being forgiven. It would all be play-acting. It would be something hopelessly impure. And it might delay, it might offend, it might preclude forever the precious imminent visitation of the god.
7
Danby straightened his tie and rang the bell.
Miles opened the door.
”I hope I’m not too early?”
”Come in.”
Miles turned round and walked upstairs leaving Danby to shut the door. After a moment’s uncertainty Danby shut the door and followed his host up the stairs. Miles had already disappeared into one of the rooms. Danby approached an open door and saw Miles standing over by the window with his back half turned. Danby entered the room and closed the door.
Danby had chosen the time of six-thirty in the evening for their interview on the assumption that Miles would be certain to offer him a drink, which would help him through the interview. He had not however omitted to drink two large gins at the Lord Clarence before turning into Kempsford Gardens. The room was dark. The sky outside was a glittering grey.
Viewed at close quarters, the idea of actually confronting Miles had alarmed Danby considerably. It was not that he was worrying about the stamps. Bruno’s seeing or not seeing Miles would probably make no difference to their destination. He had not really believed that Bruno was serious about seeing his son. Bruno had speculated about this before and nothing had come of it; he had speculated about it at earlier times when he was very much more enterprising and resolute than he was now. Danby had come to feel that Bruno had settled down peacefully into the last phase of his life, wanting simply to be left alone with his routine of stamps and telephone and evening papers, with his eyes fixed, if not upon eternity and the day of judgement, at least upon some great calm and imminent negation which would preclude surprises, demarches, and the unpredictable. He had underestimated Bruno, and when he suddenly perceived the strength of will that still remained inside that big head and shriveled body he had experienced a shock and had had rapidly to re-examine his own conception of Miles.
Miles had been filed away for years. Without reflection, Danby had assumed that he would not see Miles again. There could be no occasion except possibly Bruno’s funeral. Danby occasionally imagined Bruno’s funeral, how it would be. He imagined his own feelings of tenderness and regret and relief, the solemnity of the scene, the silent bow to Miles. Now suddenly there was this curiously naked and unnerving and quite unscripted encounter with a man who was a stranger and who yet was, as Danby had realized in the short while that had intervened since Bruno’s decision, somehow rather deeply involved in Danby’s life. He could only be indifferent to Miles at a distance. Close to, Miles was an interesting, disturbing, even menacing object.
Although Miles and Danby were about the same age Danby had always felt as if Miles were his senior. He had taken this attitude over from Gwen, who had revered her brother and regarded him as an oracle. Danby had early accepted the notion that Miles was something remarkable, and he had now to remind himself that really Miles was a very ordinary person, even by some standards a failure. Before he had ever met Miles he was already a bit afraid of him, and more rationally afraid of his power over Gwen. Miles had not concealed his opinion of Danby, and this had caused Danby considerable pain, even after he had made certain that Gwen was not going to allow her brother to forbid the banns. Danby, as he now realized, standing in the dark room looking at Miles’s back, as indeed he now knew he had simply forgotten, had genuinely admired Miles in the days gone by. And the shock of his presence brought to Danby again that old familiar humiliating sensation mixed of fear and admiration and bitter hurt resentment.
Miles turned and indicated an armchair beside the fireplace and Danby sat down.
”Look here,” said Miles. He sat down on an upright chair beside the window. “What is all this?”
”It’s fairly clear I should have thought,” said Danby. “Bruno wants to see you.”
”Does he
”Well, he says he does and goes on saying it. I’m not a mind reader.”
Danby had thought a lot beforehand about this interview without being able to decide upon the tone of it. The tone would have to be settled impromptu. And here he was already becoming aggressive.
”It seems a bit pointless after all these years,” said Miles. He was folding a piece of paper, not looking at Danby. The room was getting darker.
”
”Yes, yes,” said Miles in an irritable voice. “But children and parents don’t necessarily have anything to say to each other. I’m not conventional about this and I shouldn’t have thought that Father was.”
His saying “Father” like that brought back Gwen, even the tones of her voice. Danby said, “He wants to see you. Any discussion is just frivolous.” Miles stiffened and threw the paper away, and Danby felt that it was rather strange and wonderful for him to be calling Miles frivolous. He noticed with satisfaction that Miles’s tossed hair was falling apart to reveal a bald patch.
”I’m afraid you are not being very clear-headed,” said Miles. “My point concerns my father’s welfare. An interview with me might upset him seriously. I mean, the situation has to be thought about. Does Father propose that we should see each other daily, or what?”
Christ, you cold-blooded bureaucrat, thought Danby. “I don’t think Bruno has thought it out beyond the idea of just seeing you once.”
”I see no point in our meeting once.”
”I mean, after meeting once you’d both just have to see how you felt.”
”I think this could be very agonizing indeed for my father, and I’m surprised you didn’t dissuade him. You must have control over him by now.”
Was that a reference to the stamps? “Bruno controls himself, I don’t run him.”
”If we meet once either to meet again or not to meet again may be equally dreadful.”
It occurred to Danby for the first time that there might indeed be a problem here. Like Bruno he had not thought be yond the first occasion. “You’re complicating the matter,” said Danby. “You are after all his only child and he is near death and wants to see you. It seems to me a matter of plain duty, whatever the consequences.”
